SheridanBlau says that there are really only three questions we need to ask studentsafter they have read something, and that these three questions we need to askstudents after they have read something, and that these three questionsencompass three different levels of thinking. The three questions are:

1.    What does it say?

2.    What does itmean?

3.    What does itmatter?

What DoesIt Say? What Does It Mean?

The firstquestion -   “What does it say?”  -  is asking forliteral-level comprehension. Students must be able to answer this level ofquestion before moving on to the other two. A literal understanding is aprerequisite for uncovering deeper meaning in the text - foundational toanswering the second question, “What does it mean?”

           Take Chapter 1 of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, for example. Thefirst line of the novel reads: “The boy with the fair hair lowered himself downthe last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.” This isour introduction to Ralph, one of the many boys stranded on an island after aplane crash. At first, Ralph appears to be much like the other boys stranded onthe island. It isn’t until we reread the first two pages that we notice hintsthat Ralph will eventually come to represent fairness. Not only is “fair” usedto describe his hair in the opening line, but Golding also uses “fair” ninetimes in the first two pages to describe Ralph. Not once in my fifteen years ofteaching this book has a student pointed this out after an initial reading.However, when I ask my students to revisit the first two pages and lookcarefully at Golding’s diction, they are always surprised to “discover” theword “fair” nine times – a clue they had initially missed. RecognizingGolding’s overuse of the word “fair” leads to some natural questions: Why doesGolding do this? What is he trying to achieve in the reader’s minds? Whenstudents start asking these kinds of questions, they begin getting down intothe “What does it mean?” level of thinking.